Hakim Bellamy

Hakim Bellamy served as both the Inaugural Poet Laureate for the City of Albuquerque (2012-2014) and the Deputy Director for the Department of Arts & Culture at the City of Albuquerque (2018 – 2022). Bellamy is a W. K. Kellogg Foundation Community Leadership Network Fellow, a Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellow, an Academy for the Love of Learning Fellow, Western States Arts Alliance Launchpad Fellow, Santa Fe Arts Institute Food Justice Fellow, New Mexico Strategic Leadership Institute alum and Citizen University Civic Seminary Fellow. In 2012 he published his first collection of poetry, SWEAR (West End Press/University of New Mexico Press), and it landed him the Working Class Studies Tillie Olsen Award for Literature in 2012. In 2019 his book We Are Neighbors (co-created with photographer and book designer Justin Thor Simenson) was shortlisted for the New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards. His latest title Commissions y Corridos (UNM Press) published in 2022 is his seventh book. A licensed attorney, Bellamy earned both his master’s (M.A. Communication) and his juris doctor from the University of New Mexico (UNM). He has held adjunct faculty positions at UNM and the Institute of American Indian Arts and also served as the Creative Writing Chair at New Mexico School for the Arts. A National Poetry Slam Champion, Bellamy has performed his work in at least seven countries and continues to leverage his art to transform his communities. 

In addition to his work as an artist and educator, Bellamy has served New Mexicans as both a legislative analyst on the Consumer and Public Affairs Committee during the New Mexico Legislative Session (2025) and as a legal fellow for the Honorable Congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernández in her D.C. office on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C (2024). He is the immediate past chair of the One Albuquerque Fund and a founding member of the New Mexico Black Education Act Advisory Council. www.hakimbellamy.com